~ After 50 years, clearly gaming is lifelong

Entering Mechwarrior Online

After deletion of Mechwarrior temporary files…… No change. Still wouldn’t start. Deletion of all recent files (December dated) however, fixed the problem. Go me ! I figured it out by scribbling on my blog. So I got in and started to play, finally.

Managed three matches, and my highest damage total of 58 was in my first match. It appears that is pretty low. I got movement figured out by match #2, and Match 3 was following another mech to the enemy base capture point and starting to cap, but we lost.

The starter mechs give you no experience at all, only money. I’m not really sure what it’s called, but it’s the silver one. After earning silver, I have perhaps 300k of it and I think I need about 2 million to buy my first “real” mech. Obviously, you’re meant to play the starter mechs first for many matches.

The advice given in the tutorial suggests you ignore the light and assault mechs, and focus on the two mediums you are given. One is a missle based mech, and the other focuses on energy weapons. Since I barely know what I’m doing, I am going to focus on energy weapons and drive the Cataphract. That will be better for close in fighting if I remember anything about the tabletop Mechwarrior rules. I have two wins and one loss so far; it does not appear that the game gives you a way to view your record however.

I’m thinking I’ll log in and play a few mechs on a daily basis. I should probably explore that “social” button I saw. Other than that, it somehow feels even more like a single player experience. And my intuition was right – the progression is almost exactly the same as World of Tanks.

It’s really the lack of anything approaching a lobby. I don’t exactly have a lobby for MWO. I know there’s a garage – but it’s a tab off of a different “main page” which is begging me to buy stuff. I feel like I have a launcher page, especially since a cursory look shows me no way to maximize the screen – I have to play windowed. So it felt like launching a battle from a webpage – almost like playing a facebook game for crying out loud. Compare with World of Tanks, where I have a garage that everything outside of game is accessed from.

Also did World of Tanks. Without premium, its a lot slower to accumulate credits. Even after several matches I “only” got about 40,000 credits perhaps, playing the Loltraker, the MS-1 and the Priest. That 40,000 xp for the M41 is a long way away, but I’ve accumulated 4k after a number of winning matches last night.

Just a few bits of info:
– Your combat statistics are available, but currently not in the Mechlab but only on the website. Log in, go to your profile, select your statistics.

– The “lobby” currently really is lacking. There is the “social” section, but it’s still very weak. You can have your friends list and build groups. In theory you can also send each other some messages, but that’s very unreliable. The game officially is “beta”, while like many online games, it’s technically still at alpha. (Not feature complete. But hey, according to these terms, used properly everywhere outside of gaming, TOR and GW2 also launched in alpha state and never reached beta. )

– The garage is there, in the launcher application, including the mechlab (buy, reconfigure or sell mechs) and pilot lab (spend XP on piloting skills). The mechlab could still be a bit more polished, having to save halfway through rebuilding a machine after adding some special components is not “state of the art” for gaming any more, but next to that, the mechlab is allright.

– Making the mechlab / lobby / launcher full screen is on the todo-list, but nobody knows when we’ll get that. Also, at least in my eyes it would be way more important to fix some bugs (mostly the crashes) of the game and some visual issues (HUD problems, black and yellow screen glitches) than making the mechlab full screen.

So all in all, the game currently is enjoyable in my eyes. The whole “can spend money in open beta” concept is a nasty money grab and the plan to implement a 3rd person mode can very likely break the game for most established players and runs the huge risk of driving away the original MW fanbase. The first i can ignore, after all no matter how much money you spend, your mech won’t be stronger than a mech somebody earned by playing. It only took the one not spending money a bit longer to get there. (No gold ammo or gold armour or anything like that. )

The second point is the reason why i enjoy the game now as much as i can, before they decide to do their own NGE. (Uh… they call it NPE. Much better. ) Time will tell how their 3rd person mode turns out, but unless they somehow manage to bend the laws of physics (in more detail: of optics) without making the player feel they are working against them, this step runs the high risk of breaking the game for exactly those people most interested in the franchise.

But hey, we MW/BT players are relaxed lot. We waited for like 10 years for a new MW game at all, if they now decide to break it with 3rd person view, we simply wait another 10 years for a good MW game. 😀

Next to this possible doom rising over the horizon and some bugs, the game is enjoyable, so perhaps right now is the best time to play it. 🙂

Thanks for the info and perspective from a knowledgeable mechwarrior. I would not be excited about third person mode either, but I have good situational awareness usually. Getting circle strafed to death as a noob (both me, and any new person), I bet the first switch people look for is third person so they can figure out “Where is that guy?” I knew where he was – I just couldn’t make the mech turn so I could actually see him, much less shoot at him. I put about 60 damage on him which is one of my highest figures, but he still got me. I bet 60 is laughable, but I am what I am.

My biggest problem is, simply, I’m not good at the game at all. More games makes you better, so that’s where I’m going. Nothing wrong with playing a few games a night/day.